City supervisor fired for allegedly altering timecards

Kate King

Updated 10:32 pm, Monday, August 13, 2012

STAMFORD -- A city supervisor was fired Monday after city officials discovered the employee allegedly manipulated the city's payroll system to inflate the salary of a seasonal worker under his watch by $7,000.

The Stamford Police Department is investigating the incident, and will likely turn its findings over to the State's Attorney's Office within a matter of days, Director of Legal Affairs Joe Capalbo said during a news conference at the Government Center Monday morning. A preliminary probe by city officials indicates the supervisor's conduct was an isolated incident, but Director of Administration Michael Handler said he plans to conduct a more exhaustive inquiry with internal and third-party auditors.

"The city supports any and all efforts to see this through to the end and this is something that we take very seriously," Handler said. "The good or the bad -- we will find it and we will share it with you."

Handler said the city will seek to recoup money allegedly overpaid to the employee.

The Human Resources Department discovered the irregularity on July 31 while conducting a review of all salaries and pay scales for city employees, Handler said. The supervisor and his employee cooperated with the investigation; the seasonal worker is still employed in Stamford.

Capalbo, citing the ongoing police investigation, would not identify the employees, their department, or what type of work the seasonal worker is performing. Handler said the seasonal worker has worked with the city for four years.

The payroll discrepancy occurred this summer, after the supervisor hired the employee to replace another worker, Handler said. The supervisor promised the new employee the same hourly rate as the departing worker, but Human Resources instituted a lower pay rate based on the scope of work he would be performing.

"The position that was being filled had different responsibilities than the person who was leaving," Handler said. "And with that came a difference in (pay)."

The seasonal worker talked to his supervisor after realizing he was being paid a lower hourly wage than he had been promised. The supervisor then allegedly manipulated the employee's timecards over a 10- to 12-week period, adding in extra hours in order to make up for the difference in pay, Handler said.

"Both these individuals were interviewed and cooperated fully," Handler said. "The supervisor acknowledged what he was doing; he thinks he was actually right. I think he believes he went about it the wrong way -- I probably shouldn't speak for him."

The supervisor allegedly inflated the seasonal worker's salary by an additional $7,000, or 25 percent of what he should have been paid, Handler said. There is so far no indication that the worker "did anything other than receive money that he was promised by his supervisor," Handler said.

The deeper concern among city officials is why Kronos, the city's electronic attendance system, did not pick up on the timecard manipulation. Handler said he believes there is a fundamental flaw with the system that has probably existed since it was installed in 2000.

"What concerned all of us the most is how does an electronic time and attendance system forward over more hours than are conceivably able to be worked in a week to the payroll system without it catching it?" Handler said. "We did follow this up the entire chain of command and I can tell you it is isolated to these individuals. It does not go above there."

City officials have instituted several changes to prevent this from happening, Handler said. Department managers will no longer be able to issue mass approval for multiple timecards, but will rather authorize each one individually. Also, supervisors will now have to include a note explaining any changes they make to an employee's regularly scheduled work hours.

"We're still in the process with Kronos, and working together to find solutions that are best for the city," Handler said. "I suspect these vulnerabilities have existed in the city since 2000. I also suspect other cities may have the system in place and have these vulnerabilities and not be aware of it."

The administration will ask the Board of Finance for an additional appropriation for a contract with the forensic auditing firm J.H. Cohen, which would be tasked with investigating the incident and seeing if there are any other weaknesses associated with the Kronos system, Handler said. Board of Finance Chairman Tim Abbazia said he believes the city can handle the problem with its own internal audit function, but would entertain Handler's request for outside assistance.

"You periodically catch things in payroll, especially with seasonal employees," Abbazia said Monday afternoon. "I think we have audits in place that will catch this. But of course if Michael comes before us and presents a case that more is needed I would be willing to provide him with the resources."

At the conference, Handler said he is "mindful of throwing good money at the bad" but said he wants to ensure the integrity of the city's time and attendance and payroll systems.

"What matters to me and the mayor is that the people who work here know there's a system in place that protects them," he said. "You want to work in an environment where your systems give you every opportunity to succeed rather than the fear of who's going to beat the system."

Handler said the city's investigation did not uncover any other instances of payroll irregularity in the seasonal employment program, which pays workers out of an annual budget of about $200,000 for this particular department. City officials also looked back several years and did not find anything to indicate this had happened with these employees in the past, he said.

Lt. Eugene Dohmann said Monday police are still gathering information they need for their investigation, which he said might be completed by the end of this week.

City employees were notified of the incident through an internal memorandum Monday, Handler said.

Mayor Michael Pavia said he is happy the problem was identified and quickly addressed.

"It was an unfortunate circumstance where someone decided that they had the right and authority to bypass the system and as a result basically violated city procedures," Pavia said. "It seems that every time there's an incident like this or dysfunction in the system, it's discovered but the work then begins on making sure that all safeguards and circuit breakers are put in place so that it does not recur on any scale, especially a larger scale."

The city has seen employee abuse of its Kronos attendance system in the past. In 2008, a former public service bureau chief was disciplined for allowing his executive secretary to use his password to approve her own time and attendance records. City officials found the secretary edited her own timecard 30 times, removed the automatic one-hour lunch deduction from her timecard 29 times and approved her time using her supervisor's log-in.

A spot audit of city employee timecards conducted in 2008 reported that three Operations Department employees violated city policy or submitted suspicious timecards over a six-month period.